Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog

A film blog under the influence

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Oscar Nomination Predictions 2013

I'm demented with fever and fatigue, so forgive the lack of commentary, but here are my best guesses and, in some cases, my willfully reckless counter-intuitions regarding tomorrow's Oscar nominations:

Cinematography:12 Years a Slave !!!, The Grandmaster, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Prisonersrunners-up:Nebraska, The Great Beauty, Captain Phillips, The Great Gatsby

Film Editing:American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Rush, The Wolf of Wall Streetrunners-up:12 Years a Slavetoyed with: including the obvious front-runner, but I suspect Slave will stumble in a few raceshow 'bout that:Dallas Buyers Club

Production Design:12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaugrunners-up:The Invisible Woman, The Grandmaster, Inside Llewyn Davishow 'bout that:Her

Costume Design:12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Great Gatsby, The Invisible Woman, Saving Mr. Banksrunners-up:The Lone Ranger, The Grandmaster, The Great Beauty, Inside Llewyn Davis

Sound Mixing:12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Rushrunners-up:Frozen, Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, World War Z, The Wolf of Wall Street, Iron Man 3, The Hobbithow 'bout that:Lone Survivor

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

My "Team Experience Awards" Ballot

The Oscar nominations drop this Thursday morning, and people are almost as excited about those as they are about the Team Experience Awards, for which all the regular contributors to Nathaniel R's cinephiliac smorgasbord The Film Experience have been polled for their ranked favorites in 18 categories. The industrious and debonair Amir Soltani, whose tastes I can never pigeonhole and whose recommendations I always take seriously, has crunched all the numbers into a winner's list, which ought to go live on Tuesday night. But we've also been invited (read: encouraged) to post our individual ballots on our own sites.

I'm sort of going to do that. Bear in mind what many of you will already know: awards ballots are often unreliable as pure indicators of a voter's taste, distorted either by lingering indecisions, bothersome omissions in viewing, or a tactic of suppressing total outliers in favor of promoting your favorite underdogs among more probable contenders. I suppressed my urge to vote the latter way, even when a Best Picture vote for Southwest is a strategic waste that a Bling Ring or Touch of Sin might have parlayed to better advantage. Still, I'm noodling a bit with my finalized acting ballots and with my actual Top Ten of 2013 (though maybe you noticed that Top Tens for 2012 are now posted??). So, in those cases and a couple others I have decided to post my drafted longlists of contenders, keeping you in slightly longer suspense about my definitive favorites.

I'm under contract to post a series of Best of 2013 features for another site, so I can't get lost in my usual wormhole of unfulfilled promises, if that's any consolation. None of this is to say that I'm perfectly confident I didn't blow something major in one of the other categories. In fact, I'm sure I'd have generated different rankings and even different films on different days. But this is more or less what I submitted, culled from the best lists I could find of films that opened commercially in the U.S. during 2013. Thanks to Amir for some clarifications as far as release dates, and to Mike D'Angelo for his wonderfully comprehensive index of movies that played commercially in New York City.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1. At Berkeley
2. The Act of Killing
3. The Missing Picture
4. Brave Miss World
5. Leviathan
(with apologies to close sixth-placer Let the Fire Burn)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
1. Gravity
2. The Great Gatsby
3. World War Z
4. Post Tenebras Lux
5. Man of Steel
(with Oblivion the only other film I seriously weighed)

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Live-Blogging the 2013 Golden Globes

10:00 Good night, everybody! Fey and Poehler called their ceremony "the beautiful mess they hoped it would be." It didn't feel that beautiful to me, and I'm curious if it's quite what they wanted; they sure do make themselves scarce as the ceremonies wear on. On top of what I just wrote, I'm most happy for Alfonso Cuarón, Spike Jonze, Amy Adams, and the Frozen filmmakers.And, sight unseen, for Cranston, Wright, Moss, and Poehler.

9:59 A barely-awake Johnny Depp did what needed to be done and bestowed upon 12 Years a Slave its rightful prize. I know I just said how much I love another nominee and how much I like a third one (Philomena and Rush feel like non-entities, especially the latter, and not only in awards terms.) Still, Slave feels to me like their unambiguous superior, even if you're treating creative achievement separately from thematic and contextual importance. I'm delighted for the team who got to accept the top prize, and thank goodness for Onstage MVP Sarah Paulson, feeding a nervous McQueen some necessary names, particularly Sean Bobbitt's and Dede Gardner's.

But I mentioned Atonement before, and as befell that so-called front-runner after the Globes, I'm worried that 12 Years comes out of the evening feeling like a loser even though it won. Oh, well. Makes the Oscar predicting game more interesting, I guess! And the prize will still sit on the right mantel.

9:56 BEST PICTURE (DRAMA)I'm Rooting For:12 Years a Slave, but Gravity is nearly as superb. Captain Phillips, while not on the same level as those two, is an easy contender to feel good about.I'm Predicting:12 Years a Slave, in an Atonement-esque situation of taking the top prize even after looking quite weak all night.

9:53 Anyway (sorry, for the see-sawing), I really liked Dallas Buyers Club and haven't felt too persuaded by any of the recent takedowns and ideological critiques of its standpoint and historical revisionism. But McConaughey and Leto have made it harder tonight to feel settled in my affection for the film, through their discomfiting representations of the movie and of themselves. Again, they weren't awful, exactly. But they whiffed on the opportunity to be more ambassadorial for the film, or to reassure anyone who feels uneasy with their involvements and perspectives, or the politics of the film. Didn't help that neither said "AIDS," "HIV," or anything less euphemistic than "all the Rayons"; I'm sure they spoke from the heart, but they seemed a little trapped in the kinds of cautious euphemisms and silences that their characters explicitly suffered under.

9:52 Okay, so Blanchett. I mean, don't get me wrong, she was totally poised and everything, and took inspiration from the HFPA and blended Comedy and Drama in a barely distinguishable combo. That was cool, but also made me a little dizzy; I might have preferred a speech that was more obviously silly or sincere. Anyway, it was definitely a post-vodka, late-in-the-evening toss-off. We have more to look forward to from future speeches. But she did say that Dianne Wiest was her all-time inspiration as an actress, and that is Everything. Please, newspaper editors, make that your headline.

9:50 Matthew McConaughey's speech isn't landing that well, partly because of McConaughey'isms, and partly because he's pitching it a little too hard. And he's sounding a little... unreconstructed. The 12 Years a Slave table is having an awfully hard time not looking dismayed by their total shutout so far.

9:48 BEST ACTOR (DRAMA)I'm Rooting For: McConaughey, but much like Wilson Phillips, you won't see me cry (cry... cry...) if Ejiofor or maybe Redford pops up there.I'm Predicting: And I'm thinking Redford might. I was thinking that even before 12 Years started striking out all night.

9:46 Cate extemporizes quite well. Pretty well. Honestly, it gets a little weird at times. But hold on, before I can say more.

Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television ($32/pbk). Ed. Michael DeAngelis. Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Academic pieces that dig into recent portraits in popular media, comic and dramatic, of intimacies between straight(ish) men. Includes the essay
"'I Love You, Hombre': Y tu mamá también as Border-Crossing Bromance" by Nick Davis, as well as chapters on Superbad, Humpday, Jackass, The Wire, and other texts. Written for a mixed audience of scholars, students, and non-campus readers. Forthcoming in June 2014. "Remarkably sophisticated essays." Janet Staiger, "Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary models of gender and sexuality." Harry Benshoff

Fifty Key American Films ($31/pbk). Ed. Sabine Haenni, John White. Routledge, 2009. Includes my essays on
The Wild Party,
The Incredibles, and
Brokeback Mountain. Intended as both a newcomer's guide to the terrain
and a series of short, exploratory essays about such influential works as The Birth of a Nation, His Girl Friday, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,
Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Daughters of the Dust, and Se7en.

The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven
Allows ($25/pbk). Ed. James Morrison. Wallflower Press, via Columbia University Press, 2007. Includes the essay
"'The Invention of a People': Velvet Goldmine and the Unburying of Queer Desire" by Nick Davis, later expanded and revised in The Desiring-Image.
More, too, on Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven, and Haynes's other films by Alexandra Juhasz, Marcia Landy,
Todd McGowan, James Morrison, Anat Pick, and other scholars. "A collection as intellectually and emotionally
generous as Haynes' films" Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Film Studies:
The Basics ($23/pbk). By Amy Villarejo. Routledge, 2006, 2013. Award-winning
film scholar and teacher Amy Villarejo finally gives us the quick, smart, reader-friendly guide to film vocabulary that every
teacher, student, and movie enthusiast has been waiting for, as well as a one-stop primer in the past, present, and future of film production, exhibition,
circulation, and theory. Great glossary, wide-ranging examples, and utterly unpretentious prose that remains rigorous in its analysis;
the book commits itself at every turn to the artistry, politics, and accessibility of cinema.

Most recent screenings in each race;
multiple nominees appear wherever they scored their most prestigious nod...
and yes, that means Actress trumps Actor!

This Blog Sponsored by...

Chicagoans! This site doesn't even accept advertising, but I'm making an unsolicited exception for the
best, freshest, most affordable meal you can enjoy in the Loop, at any time of the day, whether
you're on the go or eager to sit. Cuban and Latin American sandwiches, coffees, pastries, salads,
shakes, and other treats. Hand-picked, natural, and slow-cooked ingredients. My friendly neighborhood
place, a jewel in my life even before the Reader and Time Out figured it out. Visit!

Watch this space! Chicago has a new, exciting, important, and totally accessible cadre of queer film critics who are joining forces to
bring screenings, special events, and good, queer-focused movie chats to our fair city. Read our mission!
Stay tuned for events! Cruise the website, and help
get this great new group off the ground by enrolling as a friend (it's free!) and by asking how you can help.